Saturday, May 20, 2006

The Weekly Squeeze

NOTE: WonderBaby's Second Royal Tour (BC Edition) commences May 22, so blogging activity will be somewhat reduced for a few days until we get settled into tour mode. Stay tuned for Royal Tour Blogging...

You love each other, you really really love each other. The heart, she swells.

Keep posting and sending links, if you are so inclined. (If that list of posts were to hit 100... well, we'd have to bust out the Veuve Cliquot, wouldn't we? Virtual Veuve, maybe, but still. I'd be drunk, drunk I tell you, from the heady bubbles of all the loooove.)

(I'm drunk on the Virtual Veuve of Bloggy Love right now. That slurring you hear? That's me. OMG you guys I like totally love you, you know, like totally, for real, I'm not just sayin' this cuz I'm drunk I'm totally NOT I'm sayin' it cuz it's TRUE cuz it is I just totally love you cuz you are. SO. AWESOME. and I totally love you OMG.)But enough about me. What you really came here for was the Great Group Hug Weekly Squeeze (which I still don't know how to properly name. Weekly Squeeze sounds a bit dirty, like this is the part of the group hug where I reach out and grab someone's ass, which is, maybe, exactly what is going on here, but still. I also thought about calling it Mrs. McFeely Friday, but, um, also sorta dirty. Anyone want to pony up some suggestions and help me get my mind out the gutter? Or, reassure me that the dirty talk is exactly what you are here for, and that I should just get over it and be all Mrs. McFeely squeezing virtual asses if that's what I feel like doing? Anyone?)

ANYWAY.

Starting from the almost-top of the list and proceeding alphabetically (because if I do it any other way I will totally get lost and forget who I have highlighted and who I have not, but I totally reserve the right to deviate from this plan and careen wildly and unpredictably through the list if the mood strikes), we find Amy of Binkytown's heartwarming ode to the bloggers who first made her feel welcome in the blogosphere and to the community that she's found here.

(OK, so you're saying to yourself, that is not the first post on the list. And you are right, clever reader: It is not. But Amalah's Daily Dose post about the Group Hug is not, technically, a Group Hug Post so much as it is a shout-out to the Group Hug - a very, very welcome shout-out because, um, Amalah. Down with the Group Hug, yo. How cool is that? - which is, as I just said, very cool but in a different vein. You should still go check it out, though - like you're not already, I KNOW - because that Daily Dose thing is an ongoing tribute to Mommy (Etc.) Bloggers in general and so is, in a way, the Ultimate Hug.

And, yes, Beanie Baby is the next blog on the list but I have a LOT to say about her post and I'm already taxing your patience with my rambling and I need you to stay focussed.)

So, Amy's post - which I could also ramble endlessly about - showers love sweet love on the two bloggers - Julia and Tertia - who took the time to reach out to Amy after she, as a newbie blogger, reached out to them (which is just so lovely.) Their encouragement and support, she says, made her realize that this, this whole blog thing, is so much more than just entertainment - it is community.

Yes, yes, yes. So much more than words. Making motherhood - making everything - so much less strange by casting new light on our experience of motherhood, and on our experience of other people. Revealing strangers as fellow travellers on the journey of parenthood. Opening the horizon, and filling it with friends.

I hope so. I have - had - a horror of all things saccharine and syrupy and unnecessarily mushy (see intro to this post). But motherhood has wussied me up beyond all recognition and now I fear that I may get out of control with the mush.

19 Comments:

I'm a bit too new to this whole bloggy world to have a Group Hug post (give me time!), but I want to say that your post about your job issues (of Kool-Ade war fame) has singlehandedly addicted me to the mommy blogs. I, too, labour in the dark underworld of sessional teaching, with all kinds of intangible setbacks due to not one but two maternity leaves in a three-year-period, and I was feeling particularly discouraged about my less-than-exciting course assignment/non-course assignment for next hear when I found your post and had that electric-shock-tingling-in-my-toes sensation that someone else knows what this feels like. So consider this my little footnote to the big Group Hug - and thanks.

Happy B-Day, Mrs. McFeely - long may you live to grope others inappropriately and continue on your blogger-carressing mission. It IS good. and we understand that while you are generally not so goopy, mamas all have their moments. How you don't have more with the cute thing around, I'm not sure, frankly.

Have a great time on your royal tour. Please take in some of those fine Kelowna wineries while you are there. I highly recommend going to Quail's Gate & paying for the ice wine in the dark chocolate cups. Worth every freaking penny!

LOL, I love the comments about being mushy! I too have succumbed to the Attack of the Killer Mind-Controlling Cuteness inherent in babies and have started embarassing myself with the rediculously mushy nicknames I come up with for my Little Button.

I've even started dressing her in the occasional PINK (the thought of which would have had my left eye twitching a year ago).

What is it about motherhood that carries the same symptoms as, say, a frontal lobotomy?

Your postscript about your husband reminded me of something my husband said that ties in with the Love-In part of your post (whoa, that sentence made sense in my head, but it's pretty long winded on screen!). Anyhow, he was reading my comments tonight and he chuckled at something and said "I like your blogging buddies." That's significant because he's not the type to give out love like candy. Point being that it's not just us mother bloggers who are noticing/benefiting from this community of bloggers. Kudos to you for encouring everyone to share the sunshine.

And I hope you realize that it will be months--MONTHS, I say!--before I will write another decent post because all my surplus time is now devoted to reading the mother-goodness that you have collected.